Proto-emoji
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At the Swarthmore Farmers Market this past Saturday morning, I came upon a new stall selling onigiri, which are Japanese rice balls, a popular and versatile snack or meal component. They consist of steamed rice formed into various shapes, often triangles, and typically filled with savory ingredients like pickled plums (umeboshi), salmon, or tuna with mayonnaise. They are often enclosed in nori (seaweed).
These onigiri were wrapped in cellophane and had a label stuck on the side. As soon as I saw the design on the label, which looked like a human face, I found that I could "read" it:
I didn't know what it "meant", but I knew what it "sounded like": hehenonomoheji. Moreover, the nose and the jaw plus left side of the face, sans the nose, were pronounced "moji 文字", which means "writing", as in "emoji 絵文字" ("picture writing"), now a common English word — or so it seemed to me (I don't know if Japanese would view it that way).
Henohenomoheji (Japanese: へのへのもへじ HEH-noh-HEH-noh-moh-HEH-jee) or hehenonomoheji (へへののもへじ) is a face known to be drawn by Japanese schoolchildren using hiragana characters. It became a popular drawing during the Edo period.
The Edo period dates from 1603-1868, so that means this kind of emoji face has been around a long time, at least more than a century and a half. I suspect, though, that it is part of a deeper tradition called etoki 絵解き ("picture explanation"), which goes back to medieval times and I wrote about in Painting and Performance: Chinese Picture Recitation and Its Indian Genesis (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1988).
A henohenomoheji featuring in a manga panel in the 1910 issue of the Japanese girls' magazine Shōjo.
The word breaks down into seven hiragana characters: he (へ), no (の), he (へ), no (の), mo (も), he (へ), and ji (じ). The first two he are the eyebrows, the two no are the eyes, the mo is a nose, and the last he is the mouth. The outline of the face is made by the character ji, its two short strokes (dakuten) forming the ear or cheek.
Henohenomoheji is often used to symbolize an undistinguished or generic human face, such as the faces of kakashi (scarecrows) and teru teru bōzu. The characters are often sung as they are drawn, making the henohenomoheji an ekaki uta (絵描き歌, drawing song).
Entertainment and education combined in a popular activity that was fun for its participants.
Selected reading
- "Memes, typos, and vernacular English in a 12th-century Latin homily" (7/20/25)
- "Emojis vs. emoticons" (7/8/19)
- "Emoticons as writing" (7/7/19)
- "Monumental laughing face" (1/22/19)
- "The prehistory of emoticons" (9/21/07)
- "'Facial expressions' in text-dominant online conversation" (8/2/16)
- "Explication of a favored emoji" (2/20/21)
Yves Rehbein said,
July 22, 2025 @ 2:18 pm
Your mileage may vary if this is similar to the menomoheji face, but I often think about rhyming games when it comes to Shuowen Jiezi's glyphologies as I imagine the explanations being spoken while the character is drawn in instruction.
There's a game, "This the house of Ni-ko-laus", in which you draw a crossed house in a certain shape without lifting the pen in as much strokes of the pen as there are syllables. See the Wikipedia in French s'il vous plait (with pictures) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problème_du_dessin_de_l'enveloppe and five other languages.
Another game I know goes dot-dot-comma-score … moony face in German: "Punkt-Punkt-Komma-Strich, fertig ist das Mondgesicht") perhaps refering to the Man in the moon.
VVOV said,
July 22, 2025 @ 3:52 pm
I remember my first exposure to the “henohenomoheji” was being taught to draw it in an introductory Japanese class while learning the hiragana, but had no idea it dated back to the Edo period.
Chris Button said,
July 22, 2025 @ 4:26 pm
Whether that is accidental or intentional could perhaps be looked at based on when 文 lost its -n coda in Japanese in the compound 文字 and when these henohenomoheji date back to.
AntC said,
July 22, 2025 @ 7:32 pm
henohenomoheji phenomenomoji